The Last Dinner Party lives up to the hype at sold-out Turner Hall concert in Milwaukee

The Last Dinner Party was noticeably slaphappy on stage at Turner Hall Ballroom in Milwaukee Friday night, to the point that frontwoman Abigail Morris felt obliged to explain.

Except an elated Morris couldn't quite find the words, so she let bassist Georgie Davies do the talking. Amid a rigorous touring schedule, Davies said, they had created their own special holiday to celebrate at least two days off between gigs, and after this Milwaukee show, the band was going to have a break until next week.

So giddiness was in order. But the elation flowing through the crowd was for a different reason: The Last Dinner Party is on a wild ride few bands ever experience.

Playing its first gig in the band's native London in November 2021, The Last Dinner Party's pointed and infectious baroque pop rock quickly made the band a national sensation. They opened for the Rolling Stones in London's Hyde Park just eight months later, won the Rising Star award at the Brit Awards last month, and won the BBC Sound Of Poll, which has foreshadowed impending superstardom for Adele, Sam Smith and others.

And their debut album, February's "Prelude to Ecstasy," topped the charts in their homeland and has earned heaps of critical praise stateside, leading to major New York Times and Rolling Stone profiles and several sold-out shows, including Friday's in Milwaukee.

The rapid ascent for a band of female and nonbinary musicians has grossly prompted some cries of "industry plant" and other backlash thinly veiled in misogyny. But across a 67-minute set in Milwaukee Friday, The Last Dinner Party proved that it deserves all the accolades and good fortune that have come the band's way.

This may be the band's first tour through the Midwest, and they don't have extensive show experience. But confidently taking the stage Friday in prom-ready attire (and briefly sporting matching shades for the encore), the band's five members and touring drummer Daiana Azar swiftly demonstrated a striking sense of self and delivered a 13-song set void of any drag and filled with gripping drama.

Besides effortlessly throwing out adrenaline-pumping guitar licks for standouts like "Sinner," Emily Roberts demonstrated an equally absorbing musicality on the other side of the spectrum with a gentle flute intro for "Beautiful Boy." Aurora Nishevci conjured plenty of post-punk and baroque-pop atmosphere on keys (and sometimes keytar) while also singing in Albanian with a haunting lilt for "Gjuha."

And a winning chemistry among the members — a key reason for the band's rapid popularity — erupted when Davies, Roberts and Nishevci huddled together and rocked out with guitarist Lizzie Mayland for Catholic school-skewering "My Lady of Mercy," and when they jubilantly joined Morris on the unapologetically perverse chorus for signature singalong single "Nothing Matters."

The sweet and salty nature of those lyrics carried over into Morris' humorous and frequent banter between songs, while her stage presence frequently shifted from playful, dress-flowing pirouettes to poised, performative poses. The Last Dinner Party has cited David Bowie and Florence + The Machine as influences, and Morris especially channeled their theatricality with every fiber of her being — which, in turn, gave the sharp, sometimes shattered lyrics heightened resonance.

For "Caesar on a TV Screen" Friday, Morris' exaggerated gestures played up the absurdity and audacity of male privilege. "I know that I can see myself as a man … I can talk all the time/'Cause my shoulders are wide," she sang with tongue firmly planted in cheek. But about halfway through the song, she scaled back the bombast to quietly let the insecurity and sadness behind the showmanship rise to the surface, singing, just above a whisper, "Anyone and everyone will like me then/Everyone will like me then."

Morris' tenderness also shined for the start of what she dubbed "the weeping hour" of the set for "On Your Side," vowing through the chorus, "When it's 4 a.m. and your heart is breaking/I will hold your hands to stop them from shaking," the generosity of the devotion disturbed by images of vampirism and cold-hearted murder that expose the ugliness of a toxic relationship.

For album closer "Mirror," Morris initially sang the chorus a cappella — "I'm just a mirror/I don't exist without your gaze" — her voice steadily rising for a shattering climax. And on "Portrait of a Dead Girl," Morris' crowd-swaying power reached its full force, singing lines like "I wish you had given me the courtesy of ripping out my throat" with heart-gripping venom, before leading the crowd through an impassioned, looping singalong of "Give me the strength, give me the strength" for the song's cathartic outro.

It was clear almost as soon as tickets for The Last Dinner Party's Milwaukee show went on sale, and quickly sold out, that the band was already too big for the 987-person-capacity Turner Hall Ballroom.

But Friday's winning show confirmed that, the next time the British band comes to town, there's going to be way more people at the Party.

5 takeaways from The Last Dinner Party’s Milwaukee concert

• Three songs into the set, a cheesehead was tossed onto the stage customized with the first names of the band written all around it. Morris promptly placed it on her head to audience approval — after lowering herself to the ground, as if she was about to be knighted by King Charles. A moment later, Morris asked Roberts for her consent to place the cheesehead on her head, which she gave, and Mayland sported it for a spell later in the set, too. (The scene also prompted one guy in the crowd to repeatedly shout about having a salmon hat, or at least that's what it sounded like, prompting some fans to boo and Morris to gently restore peace.)

• Morris also revealed that the band visited Mars Cheese Castle (or as she said it, the "cheeesssee castle") en route to Milwaukee. "We met the royal family and we shook hands … and we're going to bring curds back to the U.K.," she said. "We've never been to the Midwest and it's like, 'Cheese! Beer!' It's like this state was invented for us."

• The setlist included a song The Last Dinner Party has yet to release called “Godzilla,” a rollicking rocker reminiscent of a Rolling Stones bar jam. Here's hoping it makes it onto the next album.

• The band also played a cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Games,” which at times showed even more restraint than the original.

• Theoretically, opener Miss Grit was the antithesis of the Last Dinner Party’s baroque stylings, with Margaret Sohn performing Grit’s alternative and electronic rock songs solo under intentionally shadowy lighting. But there was still a simmering intensity to Sohn’s musicianship that heartily won over the crowd before her half-hour was through.

The Last Dinner Party’s Turner Hall Ballroom setlist

1. “Burn Alive”

2. ”Caesar on a TV Screen”

3. ”The Feminine Urge”

4. ”Beautiful Boy”

5. ”On Your Side”

6. ”Gjuha”

7. ”Sinner”

8. ”Portrait of a Dead Girl”

9. ”Wicked Game” (Chris Isaak cover)

10. ”Mirror”

11. ”Godzilla”

12. ”My Lady of Mercy”

13. ”Nothing Matters”

Editor's Note: This review has corrected the name of The Last Dinner Party's touring drummer.

Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on X at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Last Dinner Party lives up to hype at sold-out Milwaukee concert